A Defence of Poetry and other essays, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

On a Future State

It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human beings in all ages and nations that we continue to live
after death, — that apparent termination of all the functions of sensitive and intellectual existence. Nor has mankind
been contented with supposing that species of existence which some philosophers have asserted; namely, the resolution
of the component parts of the mechanism of a living being into its elements, and the impossibility of the minutest
particle of these sustaining the smallest diminution. They have clung to the idea that sensibility and thought, which
they have distinguished from the objects of it, under the several names of spirit and matter, is, in its own nature,
less susceptible of division and decay, and that, when the body is resolved into its elements, the principle which
animated it will remain perpetual and unchanged. Some philosophers-and those to whom we are indebted for the most
stupendous discoveries in physical science, suppose, on the other hand, that intelligence is the mere result of certain
combinations among the particles of its objects; and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to
the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations, to
dissipate and be absorbed into other forms.

Let us trace the reasonings which in one and the other have conducted to these two opinions, and endeavour to
discover what we ought to think on a question of such momentous interest. Let us analyse the ideas and feelings which
constitute the contending beliefs, and watchfully establish a discrimination between words and thoughts. Let us bring
the question to the test of experience and fact; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what
light we derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its component parts, which may enable, us to assert, with
certainty, that we do or do not live after death.

The examination of this subject requires that it should be stript of all those accessory topics which adhere to it
in the common opinion of men. The existence of a God, and a future state of rewards and punishments, are totally
foreign to the subject. If it be proved that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can be
drawn from that circumstance in favour of a future state. It has been asserted, indeed, that as goodness and justice
are to be numbered among the attributes of the Deity, He will undoubtedly compensate the virtuous who suffer during
life, and that He will make every sensitive being who does not deserve punishment, happy for ever. But this view of the
subject, which it would be tedious as well as superfluous to develop and expose, satisfies no person, and cuts the knot
which we now seek to untie. Moreover, should it be proved, on the other hand, that the mysterious principle which
regulates the proceedings of the universe, is neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an inconsistency to
suppose at the same time, that the animating power survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of
any supernatural agent as those through which it first became united with it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved,
does it follow that it will be a state of punishment or reward.

By the word death, we express that condition in which natures resembling ourselves apparently cease to be that which
they were. We no longer hear them speak, nor see them move. If they have sensations and apprehensions, we no longer
participate in them. We know no more than that those external organs, and all that fine texture of material frame,
without which we have no experience that life or thought can subsist, are dissolved and scattered abroad. The body is
placed under the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that
contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer is
struck with dejection at the spectacle. He contends in vain against the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed
cease to be. The corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have preceded him, and whose voice was
delightful to his ear; whose touch met his like sweet and subtle fire; whose aspect spread a visionary light upon his
path — these he cannot meet again. The organs of sense are destroyed, and the intellectual operations dependent on them
have perished with their sources. How can a corpse see or feel? its eyes are eaten out, and its heart is black and
without motion. What intercourse can two heaps of putrid clay and crumbling bones hold together? When you can discover
where the fresh colours of the faded flower abide, or the music of the broken lyre, seek life among the dead. Such are
the anxious and fearful contemplations of the common observer, though the popular religion often prevents him from
confessing them even to himself.

The natural philosopher, in addition to the sensations common to all men inspired by the event of death, believes
that he sees with more certainty that it is attended with the annihilation of sentiment and thought. He observes the
mental powers increase and fade with those of the body, and even accommodate themselves to the most transitory changes
of our physical nature. Sleep suspends many of the faculties of the vital and intellectual principle; drunkenness and
disease will either temporarily or permanently derange them. Madness or idiotcy may utterly extinguish the most
excellent and delicate of those powers. In old age the mind gradually withers; and as it grew and was strengthened with
the body, so does it together with the body sink into decrepitude. Assuredly these are convincing evidences that so
soon as the organs of the body are subjected to the laws of inanimate matter, sensation, and perception, and
apprehension, are at an end. It is probable that what we call thought is not an actual being, but no more than the
relation between certain parts of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which
ceases to exist so soon as those parts change their position with regard to each other. Thus colour, and sound, and
taste, and odour exist only relatively. But let thought be considered as some peculiar substance, which permeates, and
is the cause of, the animation of living beings. Why should that substance be assumed to be something essentially
distinct from all others, and exempt from subjection to those laws from which no other substance is exempt? It differs,
indeed, from all other substances, as electricity, and light, and magnetism, and the constituent parts of air and
earth, severally differ from all others. Each of these is subject to change and to decay, and to conversion into other
forms. Yet the difference between light and earth is scarcely greater than that which exists between life, or thought,
and fire. The difference between the two former was never alleged as an argument for the eternal permanence of either,
in that form under which they first might offer themselves to our notice. Why should the difference between the two
latter substances be an argument for the prolongation of the existence of one and not the other, when the existence of
both has arrived at their apparent termination? To say that fire exists without manifesting any of the properties of
fire, such as light, heat, etc., or that the principle of life exists without consciousness, or memory, or desire, or
motive, is to resign, by an awkward distortion of language, the affirmative of the dispute. To say that the principle
of life MAY exist in distribution among various forms, is to assert what cannot be proved to be either true or false,
but which, were it true, annihilates all hope of existence after death, in any sense in which that event can belong to
the hopes and fears of men. Suppose, however, that the intellectual and vital principle differs in the most marked and
essential manner from all other known substances; that they have all some resemblance between themselves which it in no
degree participates. In what manner can this concession be made an argument for its imperishability? All that we see or
know perishes and is changed. Life and thought differ indeed from everything else. But that it survives that period,
beyond which we have no experience of its existence, such distinction and dissimilarity affords no shadow of proof, and
nothing but our own desires could have led us to conjecture or imagine. Have we existed before birth? It is difficult
to conceive the possibility of this. There is, in the generative principle of each animal and plant, a power which
converts the substances by which it is surrounded into a substance homogeneous with itself. That is, the relations
between certain elementary particles of matter undergo a change, and submit to new combinations. For when we use the
words PRINCIPLE, POWER, CAUSE, we mean to express no real being, but only to class under those terms a certain series
of co-existing phenomena; but let it be supposed that this principle is a certain substance which escapes the
observation of the chemist and anatomist. It certainly MAY BE; though it is sufficiently unphilosophical to allege the
possibility of an opinion as a proof of its truth. Does it see, hear, feel, before its combination with those organs on
which sensation depends? Does it reason, imagine, apprehend, without those ideas which sensation alone can communicate?
If we have not existed before birth; if, at the period when the parts of our nature on which thought and life depend,
seem to be woven together; if there are no reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at which our
existence apparently commences, then there are no grounds for supposition that we shall continue to exist after our
existence has apparently ceased. So far as thought is concerned, the same will take place with regard to use,
individually considered, after death, as had place before our birth.

It is said that it, is possible that we should continue to exist in some mode totally inconceivable to us at
present. This is a most unreasonable presumption. It casts on the adherents of annihilation the burthen of proving the
negative of a question, the affirmative of which is not supported by a single argument, and which, by its very nature,
lies beyond the experience of the human understanding. It is sufficiently easy, indeed, to form any proposition,
concerning which we are ignorant, just not so absurd as not to be contradictory in itself, and defy refutation. The
possibility of whatever enters into the wildest imagination to conceive is thus triumphantly vindicated. But it is
enough that such assertions should be either contradictory to the known laws of nature, or exceed the limits of our
experience, that their fallacy or irrelevancy to our consideration should be demonstrated. They persuade, indeed, only
those who desire to be persuaded. This desire to be for ever as we are; the reluctance to a violent and unexperienced
change, which is common to all the animated and inanimate combinations of the universe, is, indeed, the secret
persuasion which has given birth to the opinions of a future state.